The Ringo Awards Committee is proud to announce the addition of comics industry veteran Bob Wayne to the 2019 Mike Wieringo Comic Book Industry Awards ceremony as the Keynote Address speaker!

Bob Wayne was born in Fort Worth, Texas. With the same last name as Bruce Wayne, it’s appropriate that he learned to learn to read from Batman and Superman comics. The first comic he remembers purchasing was Superman #137, cover dated May 1960.

A comics and science fiction convention dealer in the 1970s, he was account #40 with Phil Seuling’s Seagate Distributors. He opened a retail store in 1980 just in time to sell copies of the Dark Phoenix Saga and the debut of the Wolfman/Pérez New Teen Titans. From August 1987 to April 2015, he was at DC Comics, rising to the position of Senior Vice President – Sales.

In 2009, he received the Inkpot Award from Comic-Con International: San Diego, which he has attended every year for the last 35 years. In 2012, he received the ComicsPRO Industry Appreciation Award. Founding ComicsPRO President Joe Field noted at the time: “I would venture to say that no one in this room knows more about comics or the comics industry than Bob Wayne.”

In 2019, he delivered the keynote speech at the annual ComicsPRO retailer meeting, and was an invited guest of Comic-Con International for the 50th San Diego Comic-Con.

His published work includes stories in Charlton’s Scary Tales and DC’s Secret Origins, as well as contributions to The Comics Journal, Lone Star Book Review, and MAD Magazine. He’s the co-author (with Lewis Shiner) of DC’s Time Masters, one of the precursors to the Legends of Tomorrow television series on The CW. He created the Card Sharks for George R.R. Martin’s long-running Wild Cards series, now in development at Hulu. He’s currently a business consultant in the publishing industry and serves on the Advisory Board of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (CBLDF). He remains grateful that his mother never threw away any of his comics.

“It’s an honor to be a part of the Ringo Awards at the Baltimore Comic-Con as this year’s keynote speaker,” said Wayne. “I will attempt to share my lifelong passion for comics, the people who make them, the people who sell them, and the people who read them. Years ago, I promised Marc that I would do this speech and start it with a joke. Lucky for me I didn’t promise him it would be a good joke.”

“I’ve been lobbying to get Bob up on the dais for some time,” said Marc Nathan, Baltimore Comic-Con promoter. “He is a titan in the comics industry, he’s got amazing perspective on where we’ve been and where we’re going, and I cannot wait to hear what he has to say. He did an amazing job at ComicsPRO earlier this year, and the people attending the Ringos are in for a treat.”